#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation.

#2 Dell Inc., one of America’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.

#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in November. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.

#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.

#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.

#7 The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.

#8 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.

#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul, Minnesota. Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford’s new “global” manufacturing strategy.

#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.

#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.

#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.

#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.

#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.

#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.

So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?

How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?

How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?

How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide? The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs to be treated like one.

The TV dinner was invented in the 1950s, when the big tech thing in the home was the television. What if the TV dinner wasn’t invented until the computer age?

Obviously, it would have to be a product of Microsoft.

You must first remove the plastic cover. By doing so you agree to accept and honor Microsoft’s rights to all TV Dinners. You may not give anyone else a bite of your dinner (which would constitute an infringement of Microsoft’s rights). You may, however, let others smell and look at your dinner and are encouraged to tell them how good it is.

If you have a PC microwave oven, insert the dinner into the oven. Set the oven using these keystrokes: \mstv.dinn.//08.5min@@50%heat//

Then enter: ms//start.cook_dindin/yummy\|/yum~yum:-)gohot#cookme.

(If you have a Mac oven, insert the dinner and press start. The oven will set itself and cook the dinner.)

(If you have a Unix oven, insert the dinner, enter the ingredients of the dinner (found on the package label), the weight of the dinner, and the desired level of cooking and press start. The oven will calculate the time and heat and cook the dinner exactly to your specification.)

Be forewarned that Microsoft dinners may crash, in which case your oven must be restarted. This is a simple procedure. Remove the dinner from the oven and enter: ms.no.good/tryagain/again/again.crap

This process may have to be repeated. Try unplugging the microwave and then doing a cold reboot. If this doesn’t work, contact your hardware vendor.

Many users have reported that the dinner tray is far too big, larger than the dinner itself, having many useless compartments, most of which are empty. These are for future menu items.

If the tray is too large to fit in your oven you will need to upgrade your equipment. Dinners are only available from registered outlets, and only the chicken variety is currently produced. If you want another variety, call Microsoft Help and they will explain that you really don’t want another variety. Microsoft Chicken is all you really need.

Microsoft has disclosed plans to discontinue all smaller versions of their chicken dinners. Future releases will only be in the larger family size. Excess chicken may be stored for future use, but must be saved only in Microsoft approved packaging.

Microsoft promises a dessert with every dinner in Service Pack 2. However, that version has yet to be released. Users have permission to get thrilled in advance.

Microsoft dinners may be incompatible with other dinners in the freezer, causing your freezer to self-defrost. This is a feature, not a bug. Your freezer probably should have been defrosted anyway.

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My story and I'm sticking to it.
I thought about the 30 year business I ran with 1,800 employees, all
without a Blackberry that played music, took videos, pictures and
communicated with Facebook and Twitter.
I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids,
their spouses, 13 grandkids and 2 great grand kids could communicate
with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as
simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.
That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree,
Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twitterific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and
something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other
program within the texting world.
My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything
except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready
to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.
The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get
lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Bluetooth [it's red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife as everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. Seems I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and I got a little loud.
I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady
inside was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long
time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, "Re-calc-ul-ating"
You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely
tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make
a U-turn at the next light. Then when I would make a right turn
instead, it was not good.
When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of
the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone
as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.
To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless
phones in our house... We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven't
figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have run around
digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry
baskets when the phone rings.
The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every
time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on
something themselves but this sudden "Paper or Plastic?" every time
I check out just knocks me for a loop.
I bought some of those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused
but I never remember to take them in with me.
Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?"
I just say, "Doesn't matter to me. I am bi-sacksual..."
Then it's their turn to stare at me with a blank look.